Real reasons for the Civil War:

[Uncle Emanuel Watkins]

Legal conflict pays lawyers well.

Ever since I got into this Ron Paul thing, I've been baffled by this whole fascination some "libertarians" have with states' "rights" to enforce the institution of slavery. Some people who call themselves libertarian simply want more state sovereignty and they put that above individual freedom and sovereignty.

"State rights" was the first way in which a movement successfully brought our nation back to the original civil purpose that our founding fathers intended in the Constitution from the brink of a legal tyranny that our Federal government had quickly become. This movement also created the excellent legal precendent of our 2 party system which allowed in the ushering to power the Presidents of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who wisely tweaked the interpretation of the Constitution without having to resort to the necessity of an ammendment (clarification) to do so. Their interpretation of our Constitution as a consequence brought us back ultimately to the original civil purpose intended in the Declaration of Independence regarding "We the people in order to establish a more perfect Union . . . regarding the pursuit of our collective happiness (contentment)."
So, I just think of state rights as a tool for us to have to use to insure that the civil purpose of our Constitutation reins supreme over any legal purpose.

It reminds me of a debate I watched about the legalization of marijuana. The anti guy says that the pro people all scream state's rights when it comes to the legalization of weed. But then the same people cry against state's rights when it came to Jim Crow laws and especially slavery. I say the debate about state sovereignty is totally false. I don't give a crap how much sovereignty a state government or a federal government has as long as it doesn't interfere with MY personal, individual rights. If a state government is defending my rights from a tyrannical federal government (or world government) then great. If a federal government is defending my rights against the tyranny of a state government, then also great.

When our forefather designed our Constitution, they didn't care about who, what, when, where or how we all might sleep together. To the contrary, our forefather's left the Bill of Rights as our tools so that we could use them to get out from underneath legal tyranny. So, as a courtroom should be considered hell to our American culture, any place outside of a courtroom should be considered heaven.

This thing about defending state's rights during the civil war have nothing to do with freedom or liberty, IMO.

Through the use of an irresponsible political agenda which naively proposed social conflict between a righteous 51% of the masses at the expense of the welfare of the remaining 49, African Americans can't deny that they have traded in the bad condition of slavery for an even worst condition of being imprisoned within a legal tyranny. In other words, who makes up the majority of the prison population in the United States? Do you honestly call this freedom?
The only responsible solution for African Americans is for them to trade in social conflict for a more responsible movement which develops a common American culture rather than continuing in on the same old arguing about differences.